Daily Trojan
Winning isn't everything to Kaitlin Sandeno, but usually it's the only thing.
The senior on the USC women's swim team doesn't lose often: She captured two NCAA titles in March, adding to a resume that already has nine U.S. titles and five international medals, including a bronze from the 2000 Olympics.
But there are times she is harshly reminded about the agonies of defeat, and last weekend was one of them.
Sandeno could only sit and watch as images on television showed her longtime boyfriend, Texas Longhorn pitcher J.P. Howell, lamenting in the dugout after his team's 6-4 loss to Cal State-Fullerton in the first game of the College World Series championship in Omaha, Neb. -- a game he had started on the mound.
The next day, the Longhorns lost again, this time by just a run, costing them the national title and leaving Howell devastated. In the wake of the crushing defeat, he had just one message for Sandeno, a cell-phone text from Nebraska that read: "OK baby, now it's your turn to ball ... it's your turn to step up."
The words could easily be misunderstood as sweet nothings between a young couple, but they are just the type of encouragement Sandeno relishes. As she prepares for this summer's Olympics in Athens, Sandeno admits she battles complacency coming from a seemingly endless journey over the past four years to prepare for a competition that will last just a few days.
"I think it's easy to sometimes forget what's at stake here," said Sandeno, who has a chance to qualify for the Summer Games in multiple events at next week's U.S. National Team Trials in Long Beach, Calif.
"Don't get me wrong, [the Olympics] have always been a dream, but sometimes you get so wrapped up in it, you lose track until someone will be like, 'Oh my God, you're an Olympian?' and then it hits you again how cool all of this is."
Sandeno has done her best to quell the overwhelming hype that seems to bombard Olympic athletes just months before the actual competition. To keep her mind away from Athens, she enrolled in a summer-school history course and bought an iPod that she downloads music into on a regular basis.
Her rigorous daily workouts, however, serve as a reminder of how much she has personally had to sacrifice in the face of a back injury three years ago that nearly sidelined her from competing forever.
"You really can't describe the emotion," she said. "I speak to younger kids all the time about it, and I sit there and try to describe to them what it's like, but I can't. To me, it's not all about going just to win the gold. Just being there is a priceless moment."
Sandeno already knows first-hand how special swimming in the Olympics can be. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, when she was just 17, she finished fourth in the 400-meter individual medley and sixth in the 200 butterfly before winning the bronze in the 800 freestyle, her last event.
Along with the medal, she earned immediate attention as a teenage media darling who was featured on several television shows as a high- school homecoming queen-turned-Olympic hero.
She said it was an "awesome" time in her life -- one that might as well have happened a decade ago. Sandeno has since entered college and moved away from her family's home in Lake Forest, Calif., and that's only the start of an expedition that has finally gotten her to the age of 21.
Her illustrious career was suddenly interrupted in 2001, when she suffered a severe back strain while swimming during her freshman year at USC. The injury halted her lifelong swim career, but it was the exasperation from physical therapy that almost ended it.
"I remember back when rehab first started, there were so many times when it was like, 'What am I doing this for? Is it really worth all this time and pain?'" she said. "It seemed a lot of times that for every step forward in the process, there were two steps back."
Sandeno trudged onward, working intensely with therapists before returning to competition in March 2002. There were times she worried if she would ever regain the form that made her one of the nation's top female swimmers, driving her once again toward thoughts of early retirement.
But getting to Athens remained a goal, and once she won two titles at U.S. Nationals in the summer of 2003, there was no turning back.
At last month's NCAA Championships, Sandeno won titles in the 200 and 400 IM, breaking the American record in the 400. She barely finished second in the 200 fly, but edged California star and fellow Olympian Natalie Coughlin by one point to become the meet's top scorer.
"Kaitlin has really shown amazing perseverance after being hurt the first two years," USC coach Mark Schubert said. "It would have been easy to get discouraged, but she never gave up on herself."
Now, as she sets her sights on Athens, Sandeno has a chance to join some elite company by winning medals in multiple events. Among those who have done it before are Summer Sanders and Janet Evans, two of the most accomplished swimmers in U.S. Olympic history who Sandeno began idolizing as her career first took off.
"It's crazy to be even mentioned in the same sentence as them," she said. "I remember a kid wanted me to sign an autograph, right next to the signature of Janet Evans, and I was like, 'Are you sure you want me to sign this?'"
This summer's games might also be Sandeno's final opportunity to compete on the international level. Although she will return as the USC team captain in the fall, she said will be thinking more about life beyond swimming next year.
She would like to pursue a career in broadcasting and spend more time with Howell, whom she met at USC when they were freshmen but didn't start dating until he transferred to Texas the following year. He was picked in the first round of May's Major League Baseball draft by the Kansas City Royals.
"It's tough to tell right now, it's going to be crazy these next few months and I want to see how things go," Sandeno said about her current situation. "I'm leaving my apartment [in Los Angeles] next week for the trials and I won't be back until sometime in September. I'm just going to see what happens between now and then."